2016 - Brewing Schedule

At the beginning of each year I like to plan out what I want to accomplish each year.  I can only fit in so many brew days and there are just too many great ideas for beer.  So putting it here on this blog helps me look back and see how I have done.  I already have a great lineup of beers to brew this year.  Some are tweaks.  Some are new based on great commercial examples and, well, some are just continuing my sour program.

First up are the beers for my wedding.  We have a venue that allows me to bring in my homebrew.  Great news for me.  I get to say I'm working on the wedding while I am brewing test batches or the full batches that I will get to brew in April.

For the wedding here is what I am planning on:

10 Gallons of my Brett IPA.  I plan to take down the ABV just a tad so it's a bit more sessionable.  I may or may not add the mango juice.  Depends on costs of everything else.

10 Gallons of a witbier.  I just brewed up a new recipe that I will post about shortly.  This is my basic witbier recipe but I added 5% acid malt.  I want to push the beer to have more tang like my first witbier that was dosed with some Jolly Pumpkin dregs.  I dont want to go that sour since this will be for mass consumption, but I do want to have a refreshing tart bite.  Hopefully the lactic acid malt and the WLP 400 yeast can do the job.  This test batch should be ready for me to taste very shortly.  I also want to brew this one quick and serve it super fresh like it would of back in the day.

I may even test the waters on a Lite American Ale.  Part of me wants to do it just because while the other part says not to waste the effort.  We will see if I have time for a test batch.

Next up is my sour program.  Here is what I plan to do this year.
I will get a barrel of each beer.  I will take the beer from those barrels and break them out pretty close to the same way as I did this year.

Red Barrel - My sour red will be broken down into the following batches:

1. Straight sour red
2. Sour red with sour cherries (this batch from 2015 was probably the best of the crop)
3. Another attempt at my Currant and Raisin blend.  I added way too much currant this year.  It pushed the acidity into an almost un drinkable stage. I may even brew a clean red this year to mix on tap with this batch.

Black Barrel  - The sour stout will most likely stay the same.  I do have a few ideas for some smaller break downs.

1. Straight - Most will be straight.
2. Plum - I want to put some on some Vinter Harvest Plum fruit.
3. Figs - Once Trader Joes has these back in stock I want to do a Fig and Honey or Fig and Oatmeal combo.

Golden Barrel - Since I break my golden down for making Gueze I dont have as much to play with.  Here are the plans for that:

1. 2 gallons for Gueze.  First batch will be in 2017.
2. 1 gallon straight
3. 1 gallon on raspberries that my friend picks from his backyard (this batch looks amazing. the batch from 2015 should be ready to drink in March or June of this year. 
4. 1 gallon on Peach.  I really wanted to do a peach this year but didn't get enough sour beer after the mix.  Heres hoping I do this year.

Finally I want to brew a few other beers so far in the works are the following:

1. Oak aged Brown Brett Porter (already brewed this one.  Need to do a recap)
2. Belgian Speicialty Ale (Duvel like beer - already brewed this one too. Need to do a recap)
3. Mexican Hot Chocolate Stout (brewing this weekend.  A beer based on Xoxoveca by Stone.  A simply amazing beer)
4. Barley Wine - Slowly getting into these.  A small 2 gallon batch will be brewed in Spring so we can enjoy it next fall and winter.

I know that these 10 or so beers I have listed will most likely cover the majority of my year.  To close here are some numbers on my sour beer program.

Around town, it costs roughly 20-30 dollars to get a quality sour beer in a 750mL bottle.  Pretty expensive.  I've paid that much for a few 12oz beers here as well.  It's an expensive beer to be a fan of.  Part of the reason I started brewing sours was my goal to make a beer good enough to stand up with some of those commercials.  Four years later I think I finally did that.  My sours are pretty damn good.  I still buy those 30 dollar bottles, but not nearly as much.  I pulled 72 bottles out of my barrels this year (750mL)  This would of costs me over $2,000 to buy this amount of sour beers.  The costs of the barrles, wine kits that I brewed to add to the barrel for flavoring before the beer went in, ingredients for the beer, bottles etc was probably just north of 1,000 dollars.  So I save roughly 1,000 dollars.  My costs this year to maintain my sour program is going to be MAYBE 200 dollars. Depending on the fruit combos I do it could be even cheaper.  I just need to brew 3 five-gallon batches.  Cost savings are really going to kick in this year.  

Think about that.  What I would of spent 2,000 dollars on - is going to cost me 200.  Making great beer and saving a ton of money.  Great stuff right there.

Until next time...

Tasting Day: Phunky Pumpkin

This one is a bit late.  But I finally have the tasting notes ready for the sour chocolate pumpkin ale I made.  This beer started out as a chocolate pumpkin stout.  I noticed a pellicle after two weeks in the secondary and then noticed that I put the beer in one of my sour fermentors.  Whoops. Nothing really to do other than let it go at this point.  One year later, I put it on tap.

Appearance: Pretty much black.  Bit of a burnt amber on the edge of the glass.  Little bit of head is left after the beer settles.  Bit of lace on the glass as you sip away.

Aroma: It has a vinegar sourness in the nose. A bit of chocolate maybe.  Spices are noticeable but you can't pick one out.

Taste:  This is a weird one.  A good weird.  Some sips you get chocolate.  Some you get that vinegar sourness. Others have a mixed sour and cinnamon flavor.  As the beer warms you get way more chocolate.  It's sweet while not being over powering.  Very unique and overall a great beer.  Very surprised by how this "mistake" turned out.

Overall:  I probably won't brew this one again just because I have too many sours going but if I ever had a spare carboy that I can use up for a year I just may.  I saved a few bottles worth that I can sip on next year.  So we are looking at two years at a minimum.

Sour Tastings

I have tried most of my sours that are in bottles.  I have not done proper tasting notes on these.  My goal is to do them over the holiday break.

1. sour red
2. sour stout
3. kriek
4. sour red with currant and raisin
5. sour stout with blackberry pinot noir
6. phunky pumpkin sour pumpkin stout.


These will be fun.

Look for these postings coming at the end of the month.

Speed Brewing

So I bought the new book "Speed Brewing" by Mary Izett. I hear her on the Beersmith podcast and the book sounded like it had some interesting stuff in it.  Glad I bought it.  It has a tone of little easy to brew recipes.  Ciders, meads, small beers, sodas and more.  What this book has done is showed how to make some other fermented beverages without being as involved as brewing.

I never made a cider.  I knew it was easy.  But I just needed a nudge.  This book was that nudge. I have now made three ciders since getting the book.

Cider 1: A cider made with honey crisp apples and fermented with White Labs English ale yeast.
Cider 2: A cider made with multiple apple juices and blackberry juice and fermented with champagne yeast.
Cider 3: Crab apples, fuji apple cider, honey crisp apple cider, and a regular apple juice mix. Fermented on White Labs English Cider yeast.

So I have quickly covered cider.  Got my feet wet and I am just waiting on the finished product.

Next up is a mead.  I will admit that I have been intimidated by mead.  I also have not had a mead I liked.  I find them too boozy most of the time.  I also didn't want to hold up a fermentor for a year or so for a mead.  This book is about small ABV drinks that are quick to ferment.  On the podcast Mary said these meads are light, refreshing and much more enjoyable than typical meads.  So what the hell.  Let's try one.

In the book she mentions a mead called Vikings Blood.  OK.  You have my attention.  Its a mead with cherry juice.  I just happened to have some left over sour cherry juice from my kriek.  It seemed like I had to make this one.  So I mixed up 1.5 gallons of wildflower honey with 16oz of sour cherry juice. Added water to top it off and shook it all up.  Added champagne yeast and its off and running.  Curious to see how this one turns out.

I plan to do some alcoholic sodas and maybe even some brew in a bag recipes from this book. (Im tired of brewing in the cold in the winter)

Hopefully more to come.

Brew Day: Molasses and Brown Sugar Stout

It's winter.  That means stouts for me.  And I brewed up a batch of my Molasses and Brown Sugar Stout.  Nothing crazy on the brew day.  All went well and I hit my target starting gravity.  Its currently in the secondary and going to sit for another week or two.

The only thing that I did this time different is that I took one gallon and put it on chile peppers.  My buddy had some really hot peppers this summer.  At the end of the summer I took 3 and added them to this beer.

I hate chili beers so this is for him at his request.  Curious to see how it turns out but my taste buds probably wont like it even if it turns out "great".  See how it turns out.

Follow Up: Golden Sour Mixers

I've been terrible at posting lately.  I am going to do a lot of small posts to get everything somewhat up to date.  First up is the mixers I made for a mixing with my golden sour.  The two beers that I made were a lacto sour, essentially a berliner weiss, and an American farmhouse ale.  I have been mixing a few examples and still haven't found anything that I like.  The light blonde body doesn't have much to it for any flavors to hide behind.  I have one more mix.  Basically a 0.5 to 4 blend.  If this doesn't turn out I am going to go with the golden sour as is.  I liked it striaght, but wanted some new beer to add for carbonation and added complexion.  I am going to bottle this beer, either straight or blended, next weekend.  I'm losing time and don't want to back up my production timeline.  The two beers I made will be mixed and soured until next year.

So that's where I am with this beer.  Frustration is mounting but I think the beer will be pretty good no matter how it turns out.

Brew Day: Golden Sour Mixers

Recently I bought a carb cap.  You take the cap and put it on a normal plastic bottle with a screw top bottle and hook it up to your gas.  Shake, shake, shake and shake some more.  Keep repeating until the bottle stays firm.  Boom!  You have carbonated beer.

This is a great tool for sour makers.  We spend so much time aging these beers we want to make sure we get things right.  What I am able to do with this tool is mix and carbonate very small samples of beer and taste how they will be under carbonation.

Recently I carbonated my golden sour straight from my 5.2 gallon barrel.  I wanted to taste what this beer was really like before determining what to mix in with it.  To my surprise, its really great as is.  I do think it could use a tiny bit of funk and a bit more lactic twang.

With these two things in mind I went to work.  I brewed up a 5 gallon batch of the base golden ale recipe.  I split that into two 2.5 gallon fermentors.

Batch 1 got dosed with American Farmhouse yeast from White Labs.  This has been sitting for a week and the yeast has taken it down from 1.052 - 1.008.  I am going to let this one sit a bit more with a hope that it will go down another 2 points.

Batch 2 was dosed with Lactobacillus Delbrueckii and Lactobacillus Brevis for 2 days prior to adding yeast.  After the two day period I added a blend of Brett Trois and my "house" strain of WLP 550.  After a week this beer is only down to 1.022.  Still got a ways to go.  I'm calling in the big guns and going to order up some Wyeast French Saision.  This yeast is known to plow through almost anything.  Last time I had a slow and sluggish fermentation I used this yeast and it was down to terminal gravity within a few days.

Once they are both finished I will do a little mixing and testing with my plastic bottle.  Once I finalize a mix I will be off to the races towards bottle day.